et these are fertile times for some journalists. Blogs�stands for “Web logs”�are flourishing; they are Web sites with short hit-and-run commentary and abundant links to other blogs, articles, and sites.

Blogs are a pure expression of the Internet: unmediated opinion and information passing from hand to hand. Blogs promise a reckless, independent use of the First Amendment, journalism without fact checking, editors, advertisers�nothing but writers and readers communicating directly. In theory they offer across-the-spectrum opinion, electronic libertarianism.”

– RJ Smith, Los Angeles Magazine, October 2002

dear rj smith, alex beam, and whoever that chick was who wrote about blogs in the la times last month,

please stop trying to write about blogs.

you look ridiculous.

you look older than you probably are.

you make it easy for us to pick on you, especially when you’re critical.

because there are no editors doesnt make it reckless. dewey defeats truman?

please get over the fact that there are no editors.

i would love a fucking editor for my blog, but guess what, they’d probably edit out all the fucking.

when i read you and you make little snide snipes at blogging i wonder if you dont do it to get attention from the entire blogging community. more people on the web know alex beam than any other boston columnist. in a twisted way he became very popular. unfortunately he is as well-known now as anthrax. not the sort of infamy one would like, i would imagine.

because we type stuff into software and it turns up on your computer screen doesnt mean that it’s journalism. and it also doesn’t mean it hasn’t been fact checked. infact who was it who said, “this is 2001, we can fact check your ass.” mighta been welch. [ Ed. it was layne]

and just because it’s free doesnt make it libertarian. very few people use that word politely, rj smith, and im not so sure that you did just then, so fuck you for your general high and mighty oh-arent-they-cute attitude regarding the next big thing. how many hits would you get on your own?

which brings us to welch and layne.

just because you got paid doesnt make you a pro, RJ, you name check the LA Examiner, you call my boys college “dropouts” like thats a bad thing (never mentioning Bill Gates, Peter Jennings, William Faulkner, Steve Jobs, Ted Turner, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Larry Ellison, F. Scott Fitsgerald, Michael Dell, Wayne Huizenga, Woody Allen, Dan Aykroyd, David Geffen, Warren Beatty, James Dean, Brad Pitt, and scores of even more interesting and succesful people who also chose a different path other than a college degree), but you dont ever ask Riordan why he’s been playing footsies with ken and matt but continue to leave em hanging. or is it the sheepskin?

instead you surmise that the former mayor is savoring the attention. the attention of guys like you, RJ and your 150,000 readers.

so what do you do with the attention he’s paying you, RJ? didnt Dick say in the spring that he’d have this thing by the end of summer, and here you are writing this thing in the fall and still there isnt dick out there. what’s his answer?

bro’s 72 years old. tick tock old man, what are you waiting for, christmas?

that’s a question that a real reporter and a real editor ask and put in the article of a real magazine.

call us reckless all you want, junior, but at least we’re readable.